


The Santa Pub Crawl

by WashingWater



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Comedy, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3124022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WashingWater/pseuds/WashingWater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a hard couple weeks for the homicide division, and in turn for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Who could say who first proposed the idea?  They all need to blow off some steam, and what started off as a joke soon became a unanimous decision; the team was going to join in on the upcoming revelry of the Santa Pub Crawl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Santa Pub Crawl

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks for Idelthoughts for coordinating this fabulous debauchery, as well as helping to beta this story last minute to make it nice and polished. 
> 
> It was a pleasure to read all the wonderful stories. Yay, we made it to the day before new episodes! (in the US)

It had been a hard couple weeks for the homicide division, and in turn for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Who could say who first proposed the idea? They all needed to blow off some steam, and what started off as a joke soon became a unanimous decision; the team was going to join in on the upcoming revelry of the Santa Pub Crawl.

###

When Detectives Martinez and Hanson had come down to the morgue earlier with the proposal for a team outing, it had made Lucas practically fidget and smile like a kid in a candy store. 

Henry had heard of the Santa Pub Crawl, and he had no desire to become further acquainted with it. He quickly thought of a foolproof way to stay out of this particular, sure to spell disaster, after-work team bonding session. He put forth a stipulation to his participation: Lt. Reece would have to give her blessing AND attend the event. He knew if anyone was going to refuse to participate, it would be Lt. Reece.

He was feeling pretty self-satisfied with his terms, that is, up until the moment Jo came into the morgue smiling like a cat that got the cream.

He looked up from his work, and immediately saw that her posture spoke of trouble, for him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence, Detective?” His eyebrow made an attempt to touch his hairline as his lips twisted into a slight frown.

“Don’t act like you’ve eaten sour grapes.” Her smile went from teasing to mischievous. “I have an early Christmas present for you, Henry.”

_This can’t be good._

Pulling her hands out from behind her back she presented him with a gift wrapped in the most garish, jolly faced, red suited, Santa Claus paper he had ever seen.

He took the proffered gift reluctantly pulled off the wrapping paper. Opening the box he found a card nestled on top of folded tissue paper. He took it out and flipped it open to read:

_“Dear Dr Morgan,_  
 _Your presence is requested this Saturday for a day of camaraderie with myself and your fellow co-workers._  
 _We have taken the liberty of procuring the first piece of your attire for the event. Please know that it was picked with great debate and special care.”_

It was signed by everyone in the homicide division, including the woman herself: dependable, by the book, Lt. Reece. Looks like he picked his conditions very poorly.

_Well, so much for getting out of that lunacy._

Tucking the card underneath the box, he pulled the crinkling tissue paper out of the way to expose a red knitted scarf. Not just any scarf. No, of course it had to follow the theme. On one end was Santa’s smiling face, and on the other, the tasseled point to represent his classic hat.

At this point he could feel the hovering presence over his left shoulder as Lucas peered around him to see the contents, full grin before even catching a glimpse of the contents.

“Lucas.” He breathed out a controlled breath. “Did you know about this?”

Lucas’s smile faltered, and he opened his mouth ready to prepare his denial of knowledge. Henry narrowed his eyes and tilted his head as he considered Lucas.

“Of course you did. You took longer than normal for your lunch today. You were over at the precinct, weren’t you?”

_I can’t believe he kept a straight face all afternoon._

Jo stepped in to save Lucas form his boss’s displeasure. 

“Fair is fair, Henry. I do believe this means that I will see you outside the precinct, on Saturday, at 4 p.m. I took the liberty of calling Abe to make sure you are properly attired.” She smirked at Henry, knowing she had sealed his fate. Looking between Henry and Lucas, she said, “Don’t be late, we have a full day ahead of us!” 

She turned and left before he could get in a rejoinder. Having forgotten his chastising from moments before, Lucas grinned and excitedly started babbling about the upcoming event. 

“This is going to be so great! The whole gang, and us. I have just the…”

“Lucas,” Henry ground out with an exasperated sigh, nodding his head back towards their work, ”if you would.”

“Oh, right.”

###

“Where did you find that getup?” Hanson said, gesturing at Henry’s long green robe edged in embroidery, trimmed in white fur and complete with a pointed tasseled hood. To top it all off, he had been heavily encouraged by Abe to wear the knitted red and white Santa scarf.

_“You can’t not wear it. It was a gift, and they put a lot of thought into procuring it for you.” Abe had snickered as he pushed the scarf into Henry’s hands._

_He’d huffed about their dubious motivations and the general tackiness of it for some time. In the end, he took the scarf anyway and headed out the door with a slight smile._

“This,” waving his hand down the front of his body, “is the classic version of Father Christmas from the mid 1800’s. It predates all this commercialism nonsense that is the root of the modern incarnation of Santa Claus.” Henry gestured to the team of Santa Clauses - all with slightly different shades of red, white trim sleeves, and adorned with the traditional fake beards.

Everyone wore the traditional garb, except Henry… and Lucas. Lucas, who had found what must have been the most hideous Christmas sweater to come into existence - it was a full on ugly sweater suit. Henry could only hope, for the sake of his eyes and others, that Lucas would lose the jacket at some point over the course of the evening.

“Whoa, I don’t think he intended to get a history lesson, Henry. I am sure he just was asking where you dug up that _classic_.” Jo grinned as she gave Henry a good-natured verbal ribbing.

Henry had a suspicion that he was getting distracted with intentional bamboozeling at this point. It was a quarter after 4 and there was still no sign of Reece. Though in classic fashion, right before he was ready to start calling foul, she exited the precinct all decked in her fine Santa attire.

“Lt. Reece, how good of you to join us. I was starting to think that you were not going to make it; pressing police business or some such.”

“Henry, don’t doubt for a second that I would ever miss out on the opportunity to give you even a tiny taste of the headaches you cause me on a weekly basis.” She smiled and he could tell it was with satisfaction - but also pleasure as she looked over her team.

 

###

 

It was a boisterous evening, and one where Jo quickly realized Henry didn’t have the necessary experience to survive the night.

He had started off with his usual, which while normally not a problem, becomes one when the trill of cell phone messages hail the collective masses to move bars every half hour. He didn’t really get that this would be the norm until it happened again at the second bar. Two whiskeys in less than an hour, and he was feeling it.

When the call came to move pubs, Henry was in the middle of sipping his drink. The unexpectedness of it made him sputter as he waved his glass towards those present. 

“We can’t go yet, people haven’t finished.”

Reece looked to her team with good cheer. 

“Finish them or leave them!”

Jo gave Henry a smile and tipped back the last swigs of her beer.

“I haven’t finished my whiskey…”

Jo had already made the conscious decision after she started to feel buzzed that she needed to pull back if she was going to last for the long haul. She sat down next to Henry and nudged his shoulder with her own, nodding her chin towards his drink. 

“Maybe at the next pub you should consider moving to beer or lighter mixed drinks?”

He was feeling a little indignant at this point - his drink of choice being now twice a rushed affair instead of the slow appreciation he typically employed. 

“To ruin perfectly good spirits by using them in mixed drinks is akin to putting ice in whiskey; it simply shouldn’t be done.”

“Why, Henry, I am surprised you feel so strongly about the subject.” Another tiny tidbit to file away about Henry and spirits. “Well, no matter, you heard the Lieutenant, the troops need to move out!” She grinned and held his elbow as he extracted himself from the table and made a show of dusting off his green robes and repositioning his white beard.

“You know,” Jo said as she stroked her own full beard and pressed her lips into a thoughtful gesture, “I could get used to having a beard. I look rather dignified don’t I?” 

She said the last with an odd little accent, and Mike stood across the table from them and gave a lopsided grin and matching tone.

“Why, I do say madam, how do you manage to keep your beard so white?”

They chuckled at their own jokes and moved to help direct Henry through the crowds.

They were crowded around the bar of the next pub in short order waiting with all the others to get their next drinks.

Little did Henry know, but that last exchange of Jo and Mike’s was indicative of a thing of theirs, and they were just getting started. They were well into happy drunk territory as they started to speak in accents and crack up laughing before the other had finished their turn of phrase. Obviously these were well worn paths where the joke was known at the first syllable.

Though Henry hadn’t really wished to attend this event, now that he was in the thick of it, he was really rather enjoying himself. It could be because he was three sheets to the wind, but he was grinning nearly ear to ear at the antics of the team. He even found Lucas to be amusing; who, with all the gusto of someone wishing to ingrain himself further into the very fabric of a group, started contributing to the game that was Jo and Mikes inside jokes. He actually did a fair impersonation of a New Zealand accent.

Once in a while Henry would smile and interject commentary on their accents, that were slipping more and more towards the stereotypical instead of the correct, or the historical impersonations that were all over the map on accuracy.

They would smile and boo his corrections, then claim in a high pitched tones that it was “of little consequence!” Much like the sound of a queen from a cartoon.

 

###

 

Henry had lost count of the number of times they had switched bars. He hadn’t really gotten much better at managing his drinks in order to keep a reasonable pace with the call for pub switches, and it was evident to everyone that was still left standing, or who were unwise enough to have not left earlier.

Jo, Mike and Lucas were still speaking in their adopted accents, odd intonations, and using overly dramatic beard strokes as they pondered who would agree to take a hit for the team and make sure Henry made it back to Abe’s Antiques. They were dubious at this point that he would even remember the cross streets and they had strong bets that he would live up to the name sake the event and end up crawling in his Father Christmas suit to his next destination.

“Henry’s not looking too good,” Lucas commented with a look of doubt on his face, his accent and enunciation having lost all hope of having a traceable origin.

“A little green around the collar they might say.” Mike glanced over to the table where they had briefly left Henry. 

Henry’s cheek was pressed into the table and his arms were extended out in front of him rolling a whiskey glass between his hands. Mike could still hear him randomly slurring out a series of words, maybe another story about his grandfathers debaucheries in the roaring 20’s. New cars that were driven poorly, bootlegged liquor, and a penchant for getting in trouble with the ladies of new money, though he claims that it wasn’t his intentions to do so.

No wonder Henry was a little off, it sounded like his whole family were a bit touched.

“I think he might have consistently hit the good stuff, and hadn’t taken my advice at all to heart.”

Turning towards Jo, Mike spoke with the gravest tone he could muster.

“I am afraid someone will have to sacrifice to help our fallen comrade.”

Just as seriously, she pulls Lucas over by the elbow, grasps one hand onto the fabric of his ugly sweater and the other on the shoulder of Mike’s red coat. She bowed her head. 

“I will do what I must. No man left behind.”

They turned with determination to retrieve Henry... only to be greeted by a curious sight.

Reece was steadying herself with a hand on the table, leaning in as she physically used her whole body to zoom in on the photo she was trying to capture. It looked like a feat; attempting to steady her arm as well as manage to press the shutter button with one hand on her phone. Giving up on what dignity she was trying for, she placed both her elbows on the table, steadied the phone with both hands and started taking half tilted, half straight photos of Henry in all his drunken glory. She made an unladylike like snort as she chuckled to herself, sliding the phone to record as another rambling story started up.

She stood up with a full grin on her face and turned to her slack-jawed subordinates.

“Do you think I would put up with over eight hours of a pub crawl without leaving with what I came for?”

She looked ridiculously pleased with herself as she adjusted Henry’s outfit for one more shot.

They laughed and pondered what edited photos would be showing up on the walls of the break room for the unforeseeable future. Lucas and Mike pulled Henry up out of his chair.

“I haven’t finished off my whiskey…”

Mike patted Henry on the back as he hauled his arm over his shoulders.

“Yeah, ya did, soldier. May it rest in peace.”

Now to just figure out how to convince a cabbie to take a thoroughly intoxicated medical examiner who may or may not cause more problems than the fare is worth in the back of their cab.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read this story! If you haven't already read the other stories in the collection - do so now, I am sure you won't regret it. :D


End file.
